THE    RELIGION    OF  MR.  KIPLING 


RELIGION    OF 


MR.    KIPLING    ::    ::    :: 


W.    B.    PARKER 


jj.  F.  MANSFIELD  &  A.  WESSELS 
EW  YORK  ::  ::  ::  ::  ::  ::  ::  ::  ::  ::  ::    1899 


Reprinted  from  the 

New  World,  December,  1898 

Copyright 

1898 

Houghton,  Mifflin  &  Co. 


Stack 
Annex 


The  appearance  of  Mr.  Rudyard  Kipling's 
Recessional  Hymn  may  well  be  considered  one 
of  the  chief  religious  events  of  the  past  two 
years.  The  hymn  itself  resounded  through 
England  like  a  great  organ  note,  awakening 
distant  echoes  of  Luther's  hymn,  of  Milton's 
sonnet,  "  On  the  Late  Massacre  in  Piemont," 
and  the  noble  cadences  of  the  Fifty-first  Psalm. 
The  response  of  the  people  was  not  less  impres- 
sive. Throughout  Great  Britain  and  the  colo- 
nies there  went  a  thrill  of  contrite  and  reverent 
patriotism  such  as  the  English  have  seldom  felt, 
and  such  as  no  other  nation,  except  it  be  our 
own,  is  at  all  capable  of.  No  one  of  Anglo- 
Saxon  race,  no  matter  how  widely  separated 
from  the  events  which  were  the  occasion  of 
the  poem,  can  read  it  unmoved. 

The  majesty  and  restraint  of  these  great 
lines  not  only  reassured  our  generation  that  the 
splendid  succession  of  English  poets  has  not  yet 
fallen  desolate,  but  also  served  to  show  anew 
the  essentially  religious  basis  of  Anglo-Saxon 
character,  and  to  confirm  us  in  the  faith  that 
great  art  is  forever  inseparable  from  religion. 


204GS' 


051 

THE  RELIGION  OF  MR.  KIPLING  cr 


THE    RELIGION    OF    MR.    KIPLING 

In  thinking  of  Mr.  Kipling  as  continuing  the 
tradition  of  Milton  and  Wordsworth,  Tennyson 
and  Browning,  it  is  pleasant  to  be  reminded 
that  the  note  of  piety  in  this  latest  of  his  poems 
is  not  isolated,  but  is  traceable  as  the  ground- 
note  of  his  work.  Many  of  Mr.  Kipling's  readers 
will  recall  now  the  reverent  lines  which  formed 
part  of  the  dedication  to  one  of  his  earliest 
books,  "Soldiers  Three,"  which  appeared  in 
Allahabad,  India,  in  1888. 

Lo,  I  have  wrought  in  common  clay 
Rude  figures  of  a  rough-hewn  race  I 
For  Pearls  strew  not  the  market-place 
In  this  my  town  of  banishment, 
Where  with  the  shifting  dust  I  play 
And  eat  the  bread  of  Discontent. 

Yet  is  there  life  in  that  I  make. 
Oh,  Thou  who  knowest,  turn  and  see. 
As  Thou  hast  power  over  me, 
So  have  I  power  over  these 
Because  I  wrought  them  for  Thy  sake 
And  breathed  in  them  mine  agonies. 

Small  mirth  was  in  the  making.     Now 

I  lift  the  cloth  that  cloaks  the  clay, 

And,  wearied,  at  Thy  feet  I  lay 

My  wares  ere  I  go  forth  to  sell. 

The  long  bazar  will  praise — but  Thou — 

Heart  of  my  heart,  have  I  done  well  ? 


THE    RELIGION    OF    MR.   KIPLING 

Though  there  is  between  this  personal  prayer 
and  the  great  petition  of  the  Recessional,  with 
its  imperial  outlook,  a  long  stretch  to  tra- 
verse, the  dynamic  emotion,  which  in  both 
cases  is  religious,  is  as  apparent  in  the  earlier 
poem  as  in  the  later.  So  with  the  Envoi  to 
"Life's  Handicap,"*  which  appeared  in  1891, 
three  years  later  than  the  poem  quoted  above. 
This  is,  if  anything,  more  explicitly  and  entirely 
prayerful  than  its  predecessor. 

By  my  own  work  before  the  night, 
Great  Overseer,  I  make  my  prayer. 

If  there  be  good  in  that  I  wrought, 
Thy  hand  compelled  it,  Master,  Thine: 
Where  I  have  failed  to  meet  Thy  thought, 
I  know,  through  Thee,  the  blame  is  mine.  .  . 

The  depth  and  dream  of  my  desire, 
The  bitter  paths  wherein  I  stray, 
Thou  knowest  Who  hast  made  the  Fire, 
Thou  knowest  Who  hast  made  the  Clay. 

One  stone  the  more  swings  to  her  place 
In  that  dread  Temple  of  Thy  Worth- 
It  is  enough  that  through  Thy  grace 
I  saw  naught  common  on  Thy  earth. 

This  should  suffice  to  make  plain  the  mood 
in  which  Mr.  Kipling  has  done  his  work,  and  to 
reveal,  underneath  all  the  intolerant  energy 

*  Verses  :   Chas.  Scribner's  Sons,  1897. 


THE    RELIGION    OF    MR.    KIPLING 

and  fierce  intensity  of  his  writing,  the  vein  of 
genuine  religious  feeling  which  has  been  its 
chief  stimulus. 

Mr.  Kipling's  religion  is  neither  new  nor 
complex.  It  shares  with  his  heroes  and  his 
words  a  simple  and  primal  nature.  There  was 
never,  in  fact,  a  religion  with  less  scaffolding 
of  formal  theology.  Such  theology  as  there  is 
to  this  faith  is  of  the  most  uncompromising  or- 
thodoxy, but  for  the  most  part  it  is  conspicu- 
ously absent  and  the  faith  itself  springs  up 
straight  from  the  broad  base  of  human  feeling, 
unexplained  and  undefended.  In  rare  instances 
there  occurs  the  suggestion  of  a  buttress.  So 
in  "The  Conversion  of  Aurelian  McGoggin  " 
occurs  an  argument  for  the  existence  of  God, 
half  ironical,  to  be  sure,  and  yet,  I  take  it,  re- 
flecting very  truly  Mr.  Kipling's  earnest,  worka- 
day notion  of  the  universe,  along  with  his 
thorough-going  contempt  for  shallow  unbelief. 
Anent  McGoggin's  creed,  which  "only  proved 
that  men  had  no  souls,  and  there  was  no  God 
and  no  hereafter,  and  that  you  must  worry 
along  somehow  for  the  good  of  Humanity," 
Mr.  Kipling  observes :  "  Life,  in  India,  is  not 
long  enough  to  waste  in  proving  that  there  is 
no  one  in  particular  at  the  head  of  affairs.  For 

8 


THE    RELIGION    OF    MR.    KIPLING 

this  reason.  The  Deputy  is  above  the  Assistant, 
the  Commissioner  above  the  Deputy,  the  Lieu- 
tenant-Governor above  the  Commissioner,  and 
the  Viceroy  above  all  four,  under  the  orders 
of  the  Secretary  of  State,  who  is  respon- 
sible to  the  Empress.  If  the  Empress  be  not 
responsible  to  her  Maker — if  there  is  no  Maker 
for  her  to  be  responsible  to — the  entire  system 
of  Our  Administration  must  be  wrong.  Which 
is  manifestly  impossible."  Far  more  serious  is 
Mr.  Kipling's  tone  in  "  McAndrews'  Hymn," 
in  which,  out  of  the  mouth  of  the  old  Scotch 
engineer,  he  suggests  a  belief  in  foreordina- 
tion, — 

From  coupler-flange  to  spindle-guide 

I  see  Thy  Hand,  O  God, 
Predestination  in  the  stride 

O'  yon  connecting-rod. 

and  even  more  explicitly  in  his  own  words  from 
the  Introduction  to  the  new  "Outward  Bound" 
edition  of  his  works,  closing  it  as  follows: 
"Remembering  this  one  thing  sure  in  all  un- 
certainties :  as  it  is  written, 

Oh  true  believer,  his  destiny  none  can 

escape ; 
And  safe  are  we  against  all  that  is  n^t 

predestined." 


THE    RELIGION    OF    MR.    KIPLING 


These  are  but  shreds,  unwoven  and  far 
enough  from  any  ordered  texture  whatever, 
and  though  many  such  might  be  picked  out 
and  gathered  together,  they  would  serve  only  to 
make  the  simpleness  of  the  religion  of  their 
maker  more  plain.  And  its  antiquity ;  for  as 
little  in  religion  as  in  state-craft  or  verse-forms 
is  Mr.  Kipling  an  innovator.  His  is  a  healthy, 
austere,  old-fashioned  faith, — the  faith  of  Eng- 
land and  the  Old  Testament.  The  two  great 
utterances  that  we  have  had  of  it,  "The  Reces- 
sional "  and  the  "Hymn  Before  Action,"  are 
compound  of  the  words  of  the  Psalmist  and 
Milton  and  Cromwell.  They  are  both  such 
hymns  as  David  and  Joshua  and  Nelson  might 
have  used — wrought  of  words  to  suit  the  mouths 
of  fighting  men.  They  were  as  well  suited  to 
them  who  went  up  against  Jericho  as  to  them 
who  went  against  Omdurman,  and  the  armies 
of  the  great  Protector  might  have  chanted  them 
along  with  their  ancient  battle-cries:  "The 
sword  of  the  Lord  and  of  Gideon";  "Let  God 
arise  and  let  His  enemies  be  scattered."  Kip- 
ling's "  Hymn  Before  Action  "  especially  weaves 
itself  upon  all  the  battle  music  of  the  race,  re- 
calling the  far-off  echoes  of  "Chevy  Chase." 
and  mingling  them  with  the  later  choruses  of 

10 


THE    RELIGION    OF    MR.    KIPLING 

"Rule  Britannia"  and  "The  Charge  of  the 
Light  Brigade."  More  than  all,  it  leads  back 
to  the  Hebrew  songs  of  war  from  which  so  much 
of  the  poetry  of  England  has  sprung.  For  this 
new  prophet's  hymn  *  has  the  same  homely 
trust  in  God  as  have  David's  psalms,  and 
makes  with  Him  like  common  cause  against 
England's  enemies,  as  the  song  of  Deborah 
made  with  Jehovah  against  the  enemies  of 
Israel. 

Ere  yet  we  loose  the  legions. — 
Ere  yet  we  draw  the  blade, 
Jehovah  of  the  Thunders, 
Lord  God  of  Battles,  aid. 

E'en  now  their  vanguard  gathers, 
E'en  now  we  face  the  fray. — 
As  Thou  did'st  help  our  fathers, 
Help  Thou  our  host  to-day. 

Here  is  nothing  new  or  skeptical  or  scientific, 
but  the  effective  faith  in  which  the  saints  mili- 
tant have  evermore  gone  up  to  battle  or  to 
martyrdom.  The  religion  of  which  these  are 
the  utterance  is  no  matter  of  philosophical  pre- 
suppositions or  logical  categories.  It  is  a  spon- 
taneous and  somewhat  primitive  response  of 
humanity  to  the  immediate  and  awful  universe. 
*  Verses:  Chas.  Scribner's  Sons,  1897. 


THE    RELIGION    OF    MR.    KIPLING 


Here  is  no  argument,  no  formal  and  ordered 
religion  of  the  head,  but  a  religion  of  the  heart 
and  viscera, — out  of  the  bowels  of  men  in  great 
conflict  and  great  conquest,  with  the  sweat  and 
blood  of  grim  primal  struggle  on  their  faces, 
and  the  words  of  inevitable  need  and  dire  hon- 
esty on  their  lips. 

This  is  essentially  a  racial  faith, — a  matter 
of  clan  and  family,  of  company  and  regiment, 
and  fellowship  in  great  undertakings.  And  for 
this  it  needs  no  apology.  Such  has  been  every 
living  religion  among  men.  Never  would  Christ- 
ianity have  made  conquest  of  the  northern 
heart  except  it  had  been  preached  as  a  doctrine 
of  divine  knighthood  and  chivalry,  with  Christ 
as  its  chief  champion,  mailed  and  mounted  like  a 
northern  knight,  and  helped  by  His  twelve  knight- 
ly followers.  In  such  warlike  presentment  as 
this,  the  gentle  Christ  first  won  the  homage  of  our 
Germanic  ancestors.  So  always  the  militant 
aspect  of  the  faith  has  been  dear  to  the  Anglo- 
Saxon's  heart,  to  be  told  in  all  sagas  and  sung 
by  all  his  singers  from  Casdmon  to  this  latest 
voice  of  his  religion  and  his  race. 

Mr.  Kipling's  religion,  then,  is  simple,  with 
but  slight  skeleton  of  theology  and  less  organi- 
zation of  philosophy.  It  is  old,  of  old  English 


THE    RELIGION    OF    MR.    KIPLING 


fighters  and  older  Hebrew  prophets.  Moreover, 
it  is  essentially  racial.  It  follows  that  the  best 
interpretation  to  be  had  of  such  a  faith  is  through 
the  men  who  embody  it,  for  it  is  at  every  point 
human.  .  It  could  not  be  other,  for  Mr.  Kipling's 
world  is  a  human  world.  He  says  explicitly 
and  as  it  seems  with  a  touch  of  scorn,  "We  are 
neither  children  nor  gods,  but  men  in  a  world 
of  men."  In  this  world  of  men  undiluted  inno- 
cence and  divinity  do  not  dwell.  Even  the  six- 
year-old  paladin,  Wee  Willie  Winkie,  is,  in  his 
daring  and  disobedience,  three  fourths  a  man, 
and  the  only  gods  Mr.  Kipling  has  ever  drawn, 
"The  Children  of  the  Zodiac,"  were  unmistak- 
ably flesh  and  blood.  These  robust  people  have 
no  affinity  with  abstractions:  on  forms  and 
sacraments  they  do  not  waste  a  thought ;  of 
churches,  also,  they  are  neglectful :  they  listen 
to  no  sermons ;  and  even  the  hymns  they  chant 
are  not  for  organ  music,  but  go  to  the  bugle,  the 
banjo  and  the  drum.  The  religion  that  these 
people  have  is  not  for  saints  or  martyrs,  for 
angels  or  children :  it  is  not  to  dream  about 
or  philosophize  over,  but  for  Tommy  Atkins  and 
the  crew  of  the  Victoria  to  live  and  die  by. 

Mr.  Kipling's  religion  is  not  only  human, 
but  almost  exclusively  masculine.     It  does  not 

13 


THE    RELIGION    OF    MR.    KIPLING 


belong  to  saints,  neither  does  it  belong  to 
women,  but  to  unchastened,  faulty  men, — to 
Dick  Heldar,  McAndrews,  Sir  Anthony  Gloster 
and  Mulvaney.  Masculine  they  are  to  the 
core,  like  primitive  heroes,  with  the  wander- 
fever  in  their  blood,  the  venture-light  in  their 
eyes,  in  their  ears  the  roar  of  breakers  and  of 
big  guns,  in  their  nostrils  the  odors  of  the  mossy 
Himalaya  forests  and  the  spices  of  Mandalay  to 
lure  them  out  from  comforts  and  shelter. 

Among  them  all  there  is  the  freemasonry 
of  daring  that  looses  the  bonds  and  overleaps 
the  barriers  of  race.  Fuzzy-Wuzzy  and  Tommy, 
Gunga  Din  and  Her  Majesty's  Jollies  here  find 
a  common  relationship.  Their  freemasonry  of 
courage  knows  no  frontiers :  its  members  be- 
long to  the  whole  round  earth  :  latitude  and  longi- 
tude, and  all  the  lines  that  keep  men  asunder, 
they  have  broken  in  pieces.  Then  in  the  strength 
of  the  bonds  they  have  broken  they  make  stronger 
ones — to  bind  together  swarthy  bearded  Afghan 
robbers  and  blonde  English  officers  in  the  loyalty 
of  blood-brothers.  For,  as  Mr.  Kipling  says, — 

There  is  neither  East  nor  West,  Border  nor 

Breed  nor  Birth ; 
When  two  strong  men  stand  face  to  face,  tho' 

they  come  from  the  ends  of  the  earth. 

14 


THE    RELIGION    OF    MR.    KIPLING 

Like  Ulysses  of  old,  these  men  are  rovers 
and  adventurers.  From  the  drummer  boys  of 
the  "  Fore  and  Aft"  to  "The  Man  who  would 
be  King,"  the  lust  of  hardship  and  danger  is 
upon  them  all.  Captain  Gadsby  leading  the 
charge  at  Amdheran,  Mulvaney  riding  the  mad 
elephant  through  the  streets  of  Cawnpore, 
Strickland  plunging  into  the  mysterious  perils 
of  native  India,  are  only  familiar  examples. 
These  men  seem  to  belong  with  Homer's  heroes 
to  the  childhood  of  the  world,  when  men  were 
boys  and  creeds  were  brief.  Yet  in  the  hearts 
of  them  and  their  fellows  spring  the  faith  and 
the  practice  of  Mr.  Kipling's  religion. 

The  religion  of  such  men  is  short  and  swiftly 
told.  Mr.  Kipling  puts  it  all  in  one  of  the  verses 
to  his  friend  and  hero,  Wolcott  Balestier,  "Who 
had  done  his  work  and  held  his  peace  and  had 
no  fear  to  die."  A  simple  religion,  as  simple 
as  that  of  the  primitive  heroes  —  of  Ulysses,  of 
Sidney,  and  stout  Sir  Richard  Grenville.  Two 
words  would  hold  it  all  —  Courage  and  Toil;  — 
courage,  the  merry  daring  that  laughs  the  world 
to  scorn ;  toil,  the  stedfast  effort  to  make  the 
world  do  one's  bidding.  They  who  have  forged 
and  kept  this  faith  have  surely  had  counsel  of 
the  world's  greater  prophets  —  of  Joshua  and 


THE    RELIGION    OF    MR.    KIPLING 

St.  Paul:  of  Joshua  for  the  first  of  it  —  "Be 
not  afraid,  neither  be  ye  dismayed,"  and  St. 
Paul  for  the  second —  "  Endure  hardness  like  a 
good  soldier,"  "  Do  your  work  and  fear  noth- 
ing,"—  this  is  the  gospel  Mr.  Kipling  has  ever 
preached,  and  he  has  preached  it  consistently. 
Even  that  flinty-hearted  young  pagan,  Dick 
Heldar,  in  "The  Light  that  Failed,"  preaches 
work,  and  the  only  mission  for  which,  in  "The 
Children  of  the  Zodiac, ' '  the  gods  were  brought  to 
earth  was  to  preach,  "Thou  shalt  not  be  afraid." 
This  religion  needs  no  interpretation  of  words 
and  that  is  well,  for  they  who  hold  it  are  not 
men  of  speech.  The  tale  of  their  faith  is  far 
from  their  lips,  as  often  the  path  of  their  faith  is 
far  from  their  feet ;  but  at  sea  or  ashore  they 
blazen  the  unspoken  creed  in  unmistakable 
deeds.  Sometimes  it  is  done  in  a  revel  of  ad- 
venture reckless  enough  to  make  a  boy's  blood 
tingle.  Then  at  midnight,  and  naked,  they 
swim  rivers  and  take  towns  ;  they  go  into  battle 
like  devils  possessed  of  devils ;  they  put  out  in 
leaky  hulks  to  "  euchre  God  Almighty's  storm 
and  bluff  the  Eternal  Sea."  Sometimes  it  is  in 
soberer  mood.  Then  they  show  their  devotion 
to  duty,  as  Bobby  Wicks  does  in  "  Only  a  Sub- 
altern,"  and  as  Hummil  does  at  "The  End  of 

16 


THE    RELIGION    OF    MR.    KIPLING 

the  Passage."  Boy  and  man,  you  will  remem- 
ber, both  die  ;  the  one  nursing  an  unamiable 
private  in  a  fever  camp  ;  the  other,  solitary  at 
his  post,  which  he  keeps  and  refuses  relief  that 
he  may  save  a  comrade  from  exposure.  All 
this  in  silence,  for  these  men  are  mess-mates  of 
toil  and  death,  and  their  religion  is  one  of  action, 
not  speech. 

Yet  because  they  have  lived  close  comrades 
to  Death,  and  felt  their  own  helplessness,  they 
have  learned  to  believe, — to  believe  as  their 
fathers  did,  —  in  God  and  Heaven  and  Hell.  In 
Hell  Mr.  Kipling  and  his  men  have  the  most 
implicit  belief.  Tommy  Atkins,  McAndrews 
and  Tomlinson  all  hold  it  as  certain  as  sin,  and 
they  show  a  disposition  to  treat  it  seriously. 
They  would  feel  the  ballad  of  Gunga  Din  sadly 
incomplete  without  the  lines  which  the  British 
soldier  sings  so  cheerily,  and  which  give  a  sort 
of  dramatic  completeness  to  the  episode  it  nar- 
rates. 

"So  I'll  meet  him  later  on, 
At  the  place  where  he  is  gone  — 
Where  it's  always  double  drill  and  no  canteen  ; 
"E'll  be  squattin'  on  the  coals 
Givin'  drink  to  poor  damned  souls, 
An'  I'll  get  a  swig  in  hell  from  Gunga  Din  I  " 

I/ 


THE    RELIGION    OF    MR.    KIPLING 

Such  a  hell  is  not  merely  a  warm  refuge  for 
the  morally  deficient  and  unfit ;  as  much  as 
heaven,  it  demands  achievement  as  the  price  of 
entrance,  for  in  Kipling's  theology  not  less  than 
in  Browning's,  "the  unlit  lamp  and  the  ungirt 
loin  "  represent  the  chief  iniquity  of  men.  All 
this  Mr.  Kipling  tells  in  his  poem  "Tomlin- 
son."*  Tomlinson  died,  and,  being  refused  ad- 
mission to  heaven,  came  in  time  to  the  gates  of 
hell,  where  he  would  have  entered,  but  the 
Devil  stopped  him  on  the  threshold,  demanding 
evidence  of  his  right.  At  that  Tomlinson  racked 
his  memory  for  strong  sins,  but  he  could  muster 
only  copied  sins,  weak  counterfeits  taken  from 
others  and  from  books.  These  do  not  pass  cur- 
rent at  the  door  of  the  pit,  therefore  the  Devil 
scorned  him  and  hell  spewed  him  out  of  her 
mouth.  "  Go,"  said  the  Devil, 

"  Get  ye  back  to  the  flesh  again  for  the  sake  o' 
man's  repute. 

But  look  that  ye  win  to  worthier  sin  ere  ye 
come  back  again." 

This  is  a  thoroughly  earnest  hell.  The  men 
who  believe  in  it  believe  also  in  an  earnest  heav- 
en. That,  too,  is  to  be  attained  only  by  toil. 

*  Verses,  Chas.  Scribner's  Sons,  1897. 

18 


THE    RELIGION    OF    MR.    KIPLING 

The  test  question  asked  at  the  gates  of  Mr 
Kipling's  heaven  is  also  to  be  found  in  the  poem 
"Tomlinson."  When  the  spirit  of  Tomlinson 
appeared  before  St.  Peter  he  made  much  of  his 
reading  and  his  thoughts,  at  which — 

Peter  twirled  the  jangling   keys   in   weariness 

and  wrath. 
"  Ye  have  read,  ye  have  heard,  ye  have  thought," 

he  said,  "and  the  tale  is  yet  to  run. 
By  the  worth  of  the  body  that  once  ye   had, 

give  answer  —  what  ha'  ye  done?  " 

This  is  the  heaven  of  "  The  Last  Chantey," 
of  the  Envoi  to  "The  Seven  Seas,"  and  of  the 
poem  to  Wolcott  Balestier.  I  recall  no  other  con- 
ception in  modern  English  writing  at  once  so 
splendid  in  its  imagery  and  so  strenuous  in  its 
tone.  The  mark  of  the  men  who  hold  this  heaven 
that  lies  "Beyond the  loom  of  the  last  lone  star," 
is  that  they  have  served  God 's  world,  and  they 
who  reach  it  shall  still  have  room  to  do  brave 
work,  —  of  all  imaginable  joys  the  one  in  Mr. 
Kipling's  eyes  most  to  be  desired.  Hence  what 
he  calls  elsewhere  "  the  clear,  clean  joy  of  crea- 
tion" is  for  him  the  supreme  bliss  of  a  heaven 
which  he  has  restored  for  many  to  a  place  among 
live  conceptions  and  invested  with  a  new 
glamour  and  glory.  There,  he  says,  — 

'9 


THE    RELIGION    OF    MR.    KIPLING 


"Ofttimes  cometh  our  wise  Lord  God,  master 

of  every  trade, 

And  tells  them  tales  of   His   daily   toil,  of 
Edens  newly  made  "  ; 

In  which  achievements  such  men  as  win  to 
heaven  may  also  share,  serving  with  Him  in 
high  comradeship  under  His  eye,  as  it  is  told  in 
the  Envoi  to  the  "Seven  Seas,"  — 

Only  the  Master  shall  praise  us  and  only  the 

Master  shall  blame, 
And  no  one  shall  work  for  money,  and  no  one 

shall  work  for  fame, 
But  each  for  the  joy  of  the  working,  and  each 

in  his  separate  star  — 
Shall  draw  the  Thing  as  he  sees  it  for  the  God 

of  Things  as  They  Are. 

The  God  of  Things  as  They  Are  is  the  sort 
of  god  Mr.  Kipling's  men  should  worship  —  the 
god  of  duty  and  battle  and  storm.  He  is  not  a 
god  to  be  wheedled  into  pity  or  indulgence. 
What  should  the  crew  of  the  Bolivar  or  they 
who  were  at  the  taking  of  Lungtungpen  do  with 
pity  ?  These  men  would  say  with  Stevenson, — 

Our  God  is  still  the  God  of  might, 
In  deeds,  in  deeds,  is  His  delight. 

And  to  deeds  they  make  their  only  appeal.     Even 
20 


THE    RELIGION    OF    MR.    KIPLING 

McAndrews,  when  he  comes  to  lay  his  case  be- 
fore the  Lord,  rests  it  here  — 

"  An'  I  ha'  done  what  I  ha'  done — judge  Thou  if 
ill  or  well." 

Yet,  by  Mulholland's  account  in  the  quaint  song 
of  the  sea,  "  Mulholland's  Contract,"  this  justice 
is  tempered  with  mercy,  — 

"An"  I  spoke  to  God  of  our  Contract,  an'  He 

says  to  my  prayer : 
'  I  never  puts  on  My  ministers  no  more  than 

they  can  bear.' " 

There  is  an  admixture  of  tenderness,  too,  which 
McAndrews,  who  had  a  closer  walk  with  God 
than  any  other  of  Kipling's  men,  came  to  know. 
Speaking  of  his  bitter  struggle,  he  says,  — 

"Yet  was  Thy  hand  beneath  my  head,  about 
my  feet  Thy  care." 

For  of  course  these  rugged  characters  are 
after  all,  not  without  reverence  and  piety.  At 
the  inevitable  moments  when  the  stress  of  life 
becomes  too  great  for  any  stoicism,  — when  the 
tremor  of  battle  is  on  their  faces,  and  their 
hearts  are  wrung  within  them,  their  humanity 
shows  plain,  and  they  pray,  as  they  do  in  their 
"  Hymn  Before  Action  "  — 

21 


THE    RELIGION    OF    MR.    KIPLING 


Cloak  Thou  our  undeserving, 

Make  firm  the  shuddering  breath, 

In  silence  and  unswerving, 
To  taste  Thy  lesser  death. 

Here  is  disclosed  again  the  reverent  mood 
which,  though  so  often  concealed,  is  unmistak- 
ably dominant  in  Mr.  Kipling's  work.  In  his 
most  personal  prayer  of  all,  which  we  have  al- 
ready quoted,  it  appears  most  plainly,  — 

The  long  bazar  will  praise,  but  Thou  — 
Heart  of  my  heart  —  have  I  done  well  ? 

So  Mr.  Kipling  expresses  the  sense  of  innate 
divinity  which  is  the  core  of  courage  and  the  life 
of  all  effective  toil.  The  faith  and  daring  of  his 
rough  heroes  spring  from  the  same  source  as 
all  the  religion  of  the  world  —  from  the  con- 
sciousness that  men  are  not  alien  to  the  Uni- 
verse, but  that  the  heart  of  the  world  and  their 
hearts  beat  to  the  same  measure.  This  and 
those  other  feelings  which  make  up  the  body  of 
our  faith  Mr.  Kipling  has  uttered  afresh  for  us  in 
poems  which,  like  the  Recessional,  have  at  once 
voiced  the  prayers  and  solemn  hopes  of  our  gen- 
eration and  given  their  maker  his  chief  title  to 
a  place  among  the  greater  names  of  English 

poetry, 

W.  B.  PARKER. 
BOSTON. 


DC  SOUTHERN  REGIONAL  LIBRARY  FACILITY 


A     000036129     5 


